Thursday August 13 11:44 PM ET

Sun To Offer Solaris For Free To Noncommercial Users

By Charles Babcock, ZDNet

Sun Microsystems Inc. said recently that it is going to make its Solaris
operating system available for free to noncommercial users on both its
Sparc and Intel Corp.'s hardware.

Those qualified to receive Solaris for $20 - to cover shipping and
handling - include educators, researchers and students, said Sun
spokesman Ry Schwark. The giveaway is part of an expanded Sun Developer
Connection program. Noncommercial developers may order a copy at
www.sun.com/developers. Academics and researchers may order a copy at
www.sun.com/edu/solaris.

Sun recently reduced the price of Solaris for one- to four-processor
servers to $695, a price point below the competing Microsoft Corp.
Windows NT.

Sun's decision to make its operating system available for free in
certain cases follows the appearance of Linus Torvalds on the cover of
the Aug. 10 issue of Forbes magazine. His photo illustrates an article
on the growing acceptance of the open source code movement, in which
developers collaborate on the software product over the Internet, then
make it available for free. Torvalds is the author of Linux, a free
version of Unix that runs on Intel hardware.

Kim Jones, Sun's vice president for academic and research computing,
said the Sun giveaway keeps Solaris in step with Sun's Java
Development Kit, which also is available for free. "This is the ideal
complement to the Sun program that offers free Java development tools
for teaching," she said.

Sun's move also follows IBM Corp.'s announcement that it will include
the Apache open source code Web server in its WebSphere
application server, as well as announcements from Informix Corp. and
Oracle Corp. that the companies were offering their database
management systems under Linux.